Anne Whitaker, Bratton, to Alfred Whitaker, Salisbury, [Wednesday], 3 October 1804.

My dear little Boy

   A convenient opportunity presenting itself, I have sent out a present of such trifles in the eatable way as used to please people of your age and size desiring at the same time that your Cousins may enjoy all due participation – the satisfaction of distributing your little treasures among your playfellows and associates is one into which I wish you fully to enter – you understand very well the pleasure of partaking of anything which is agreable to you, but believe me a generous Mind finds a far superior gratification in communicating of its enjoyments to others – A Selfish person is at once the object of our contempt and pity – we necessarily despise him from the meanness of the vice to which he is addicted a vice which reduces him to a level with the inferior Brutes and we are compell’d to pity him when we reflect how much pleasure he is deprived of by his depraved disposition, and that of the most refined and exalted kind –

   The Bible that best of all books inculcates liberality upon the most enlarged and noble principles, presenting for our imitation the various and sublime displays of the Divine Being who scatters blessing even on the unthankful & disobedient – and animates us to the practice of this virtue by the free reward which God vouchsafes to bestow on it even in the present Life – if you read attentively the book of Proverbs, you will there see selfishness or covetousness spoken of with the greatest detestation and the opposite disposition highly commended and encouraged –

   You will perhaps think I have said a great deal on this subject, especially with reference to so trifling a  circumstance  as the distribution of a little Cake & fruit – but I can assign a very sufficient reason – young as you are your Character is now  forming – what you are at present you will doubtless very much resemble in future; (any other than as I trust the grace of God may cause you to differ) and there is very little reason to hope that a selfish boy, will ever make a generous Man it had been frequently remark’d that covetousness is a vice which strengthens with encreasing years so that we do not expect to see a Child who is selfish in dividing an Orange or a Cake liberal and kind as he advances in Life –

   I make no question but you were much rejoiced at sight of our Papa, and had many things to say to him about your Brothers.  I assure you they do not forget you, Joshua & Edward often express a wish to see you – I think I could tell you of one person who thinks of you and wishes to see you most of all – cannot you guess who this is.  I dare say Aunt will be able to make it out if you should not – but this one person loves you so dearly that believing it is for your good to be where you are she willingly foregoes the gratification of looking at you from Day to Day.

   I hope my dear Boy will endeavor to make the best possible use of his time while absent from home, that when it shall please a gracious God to return him in safety to my embrace, I may have cause for thankfulness that I had placed him where he now is.

   Remember me most affectionately to your dear Aunt & Uncle, kiss each little Cousin for me and accept for yourself the tenderest love of a Mother who is perhaps too devotedly Yours

                                 Anne Whitaker

Bratton Farm

Oct.r 3rd 1804

don’t forget to make yr schoolfellows welcome to a part of yr cake

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 194-95 (annotated version); Reeves Collection, Box 21.4.f.(i.), Bodleian. Address:  Master Whitaker. No postmark. Alfred was five years old at this time, and has been sent to MGS for his early education, possibly because of the demands of Anne’s school upon her own time, but more likely as part of a practice common among nonconformist families, in which children were ‘traded’, so to speak, among their families, especially during late childhood and early adolescence. MGS will return the favor by sending some of her own children to Bratton.  Whether this letter was meant to be read by Alfred (if so, his reading level at five was considerably advanced) or read to him by MGS, is not clear, but most likely it is the former, and if so provides some remarkable evidence of the value provincial nonconformist families placed on the early education of their children, enlarging both their intellectual and moral natures, as letters 126 and 127 make clear. As Anne writes above, sending her child away at five, though not an easy decision, was viewed as a necessary duty on her part for the benefit of her son. Anne's two other sons, Joshua and Edward, were aged three and two, respectively.